THE ACCRESCENT™ PODCAST EPISODE 208

Episode 208 FINAL

[00:00:00] Hello, welcome back to the Accescent Podcast. I’m your host, Leigh Ann Lindsey, I am so excited to share today’s conversation with you all as you’ll hear from our actual conversation. Nadia is one of the colleagues in my depth psychology and integrative healing PhD program, and it is so special to have Nadia on as one of the first individuals from my PhD cohort.

I feel like you guys are getting a deeper glimpse into how special this program is, how aligned so many of the individuals are, and I was so excited to have Nadia on because I’ve been talking about this PhD. I’ve been talking about depth psychology for the whole first year of this program, and yet I haven’t had any episode on what is depth psychology beyond just.

Tending to the unconscious mind. And so [00:01:00] it’s really, really special to have Nadia on to give us an introduction to this field of depth psychology, the unconscious mind, and what this means, what this looks like, what it’s like to work with a therapist or a psychologist who takes a depth psychological approach to their work.

So I am, I’m so excited for you guys to get this introduction, and Nadia was the perfect guest to have on, to introduce us to this field in a way that I think really clarifies how it is so different from conventional psychology. A little intro to Nadia, Nadia Rae Brackett is a licensed depth oriented psychotherapist.

Organizational leadership, coach Anne is currently pursuing a PhD in depth psychology. She helps individuals, couples, and leadership teams explore the deeper patterns shaping their relationships, work and inner lives. Her [00:02:00] innovative and soulful approach has been recognized by esteemed organizations like Harvard Business School and Univision.

I also wanted to make sure I mentioned in the intro that she is is offering a free 30 minute alignment call for one-on-one clients and organizations who are interested in working with her further. So I’ll make sure that link is in the show notes below. So with that, please enjoy this conversation with Nadia Rae Bracket.

Well, Nadia, welcome to the Accrescent Podcast. Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here. We’re kind of giggling because I’ll have already shared this in the intro, but you and I are in our, our PhD program together. We’ve been in a cohort for a, a little under a year now, but it’s kind of funny.

Obviously we see each other in professional capacities, but this is just a whole different layer of that, of like, you seeing me and my professional podcast host capacity and me seeing you as like a professional guest. So it’s, [00:03:00] it’s kind of fun and we’re a little giggly of like, Ooh, okay. I feel a little shy right now.

I know. I’m like blushing. I’m so excited to have you on though. I mean, you know. Everyone in our cohort is doing such amazing things. I could have every single person in our cohort on the podcast. Um, but I’m so excited to have you on one. You are the first guest I’m having on to even talk about depth psychology and introduce this field to the audience.

So no pressure, but uh, that is gonna be really exciting for me ’cause my audience has known I’m doing this program and I’ve talked about it in snippets. But I think to be able to really help people understand what is it, how is it different, I’m really excited to offer that to them. And then we’re gonna talk about Enneagram a little bit, um, which also I’m excited to dive into.

I haven’t had anyone on the podcast to dive into, so it’s just, I’m really excited to have you. Thanks for being here. Great. I’m so [00:04:00] excited. Yay. Thank you. And I didn’t know that you haven’t had anyone to talk about depth psychology yet, so I feel honored. Yeah, I think it’ll be a really lovely introduction.

And to that end, I, I think it’ll be nice really to hear your perspective on it, because you, you actually do have, you know, therapy, psychotherapy background. I am not coming from that field. I kind of got into this circuitously and don’t have that therapy background training. So I, it’ll be nice for me to even be able to hear from your perspective of like, I’m assuming there was a time that you were maybe practicing therapy more traditionally and then you got into the depth psychological lens.

Is that accurate? It’s actually not accurate. I Okay. Because I know you did your master’s at, uh, Pacifica. I did, yeah. So you’ve been deaf the whole time. Yep. Born and raised as a therapist? Yeah. In the depth orientation. Yeah, [00:05:00] so I got my start in depth therapy because I found myself in my own depth oriented therapy 10 years ago now, and synchronistically.

I was looking for a therapist and I went to the Psychology Today website and looked at every therapist in my area that, uh, was listed and I only resonated with one person. And I called her and she’s like, well, I just now have an opening, like one of my clients just finished up work. I have one opening, it’s this slot.

And it happened to be on the day off, my weekly day off of work. And so I was like, okay, this is perfect. And I didn’t know it at the time and had no idea what it meant. But she was a somatic experiencer that got her counseling degree at Pacifica. So she combined, you know, depth and somatics. And the entire time I just kept [00:06:00] thinking, wow, this is helping me so much.

And this is opening my eyes and my heart and my soul and my mind to something that I had always felt like was possible but didn’t have any grounding or knowledge of it or, um. I didn’t have a place to have the vocabulary to ask for it exactly. Like I, mm-hmm. I didn’t have it right. But being in that therapeutic space, I was like, wow, this is what I wanna do.

And so I kept saying to my therapist, well, I wanna be a therapist, but I want to go to a school that is more holistic and is much more about soul, and I don’t even know if that exists. And she was like, well, I’m not really supposed to give advice, uh, but you should look into the school called Pacifica.

And it was on our last session, she was closing her private practice. And I was like, okay. So I went [00:07:00] home and I looked at Pacifica’s website and I just started crying because it felt like home. It felt like that thing that I had known in my heart. Didn’t know it actually existed. And so, mm-hmm. I, uh, applied for the master’s program and started the next year, and that was in 2018.

And so this is year six of depth oriented work, and I actually don’t really have a lot of experience outside of it other than when I was in my practicum training to become a therapist. I worked at a family systems agency, which focused on suicide prevention and intervention for. Kids and adolescents, so, mm-hmm.

I have a bit of experience in that sense, but I still brought a depth perspective to it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it’ll be nice though to hear you just be able to have you kind of explain [00:08:00] what, what the depth oriented therapy looks like specifically, because even I have to be really clear and careful with my clients to let them know I’m, I’m not a therapist, I’m not a psychotherapist.

I bring this depth oriented work to our sessions, but it’s not quote unquote therapy. But I tend to get ahead of myself and I did already today, which is, so, I’ll backtrack us too. Give us a little bit of your origin story. You said you found this depth practitioner 10 years ago. Is that what led you into therapy?

And if not, what was kind of the journey to finding and embodying the work that you do now? Yeah, well it was going to therapy and then it was also, I have my bachelor’s in criminology and justice studies and I did a lot of prison work and working with, um, you know, working in the realm of restorative justice and went to the Netherlands and [00:09:00] was in Dutch prisons where they’re closing prisons all the time because they don’t have enough bodies to fill them.

And Wow. Yeah. And I mean it’s, it’s beautiful in that sense, right? Uh, it’s still prison, so there, there’s another conversation to be had, but comparatively to the United States, you know, there’s just such a difference in how people are treated. And it was actually in the Dutch prisons that I got to learn about somatic therapy for the first time.

They had a somatic therapist there and I got to do no way. Yeah. And I got to do somatic interventions, um, with incarcerated folks like me doing it with them and doing group activities and, and trust building activities. And it was so. Eyeopening and so lovely. And so when I came back to the States, I was like, I can’t work in prisons.

I can’t do this. I can’t focus so much on the macro [00:10:00] in America because it just feels so overwhelming. How do I help people before it gets to the point of incarceration? Like by the time somebody’s incarcerated, they have endured so much trauma that’s led them there. Mm-hmm. And so it was both my personal trauma history and story that led me to therapy.

And also I was at this crossroads of graduating from my undergrad and going, I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t know what I want to do. And so I found myself in therapy and it was through that therapeutic experience that I was like, oh, this is my path. Oh, I love that. Wow. I actually didn’t know the, your history and having been to Netherlands, that’s so amazing.

And how cool that they’re doing somatic work over there. Yeah. So to that end, maybe you can give us an introduction in your words. ’cause I think all of us probably would describe it a little bit differently, but what is depth psychology, in your words, how is it different than what maybe the standard audience might [00:11:00] think of as psychology or therapy?

Yeah. It’s such a good question because I feel like depth psychology is so elusive, right? Yeah. Completely. Like we all have a different definition and what is it? And you know, the more that I practice it, the less I know and the, the less concrete my definition becomes. Um, but really depth psychology is this study of soul, right?

And mm-hmm. And psyche means soul. And so psychology is really about tending to the soul. And I think that is what depth psychology and depth practitioners really take seriously a soul tending. And so, you know, we work a lot in terms of the unconscious. We’re in dialogue with the unconscious all the time.

And that can happen through things like dreams or [00:12:00] images or myths and fairytales, archetypes, right? We’re, we’re in this imaginal realm that we can feel and that we know we are a part of, but we can’t just see. We can’t always name, we can’t concretize. And I think that that really challenges modern day western psychology that has kind of stripped soul away from the equation and is.

Wanting to be this concretized science and this, this linear science. Mm-hmm. And, um, stick so much to the conscious realm that it misses all of the rest of what’s living around us and in us that we can’t name, but we know exists. Yeah. I sometimes have described depth psychology as holistic psychology.

You use this word already too, where it’s that word just encompasses mind, body, and spirit. They can’t be separated. We’re [00:13:00] looking at everything holistically. And I remember in this first year of our program reading a little bit about kind of the history of psychology and one of my favorite books we read was Care of the Soul, I think, by Thomas Moore.

And he takes us back to. Exactly what you just said. Psyche means soul. And so psychology in its earliest, earliest origins was about the soul and helping people really, I think, understand what’s going on in their soul, what’s misaligned for their soul, what’s weighing on their soul. And then, but I think this is what helped me understand it so much, how we started to get away from that, at least what was presented in this book is in the early days, psychology was really kind of touted as this like woo woo unscientific practice.

And so psychologists wanted to be prestigious and revered and respected like other sciences, which is what brought us, I [00:14:00] think, away from that soul and that unconscious into this purely kind of consciousness, cognitive behavioral therapy type things that can be measured a little more quantitatively versus a lot of what we’re doing in depth psychology is qualitative.

And hard to measure. Yeah. So it’s this deeper level of tending, and I completely agree. I think it, it encompasses a lot. It’s kind of a broad field, and also the way any of us might describe it could be so different. I, I love that soul tending and it’s, I think it’s like that combination of what is my soul needing?

And there might be things consciously that are coming up, but really there’s so much going on unconsciously. There’s so much unconscious communication and dialogue that’s happening all the time. Sometimes that’s happening through somatic sensations. Sometimes I think like our [00:15:00] unconscious, and even more than that, the collective unconscious is trying to communicate with us through synchronicities, through happenstance or coincidence, although we wouldn’t call them coincidence, in depth psychology through dreams.

Um, and really, I, I almost think of us as like translators of we’re here to help you be able to spot and translate all of this communication that’s coming from your deep inner self, your soul, and the collective unconscious. Yeah. I think that so much of what gets communicated through our body is not just sensation to be regulated from like a polyvagal standpoint, right?

We, we know so much about the nervous system now and it’s wonderful knowledge that has really, really helped us. Depth psychology takes polyvagal a little bit further, like you’re saying, where sensation in our body is often the [00:16:00] unconscious speaking is often soul speaking through the body, right? And so we’re always listening to Psyche and the body is a portal to Psyche.

And so we’re paying attention to the way that our body feels in any given moment. Um, any sensations that arise when you wake up from a dream, what do you remember about the dream and what was the feeling in the dream, right? Uh, when you watched movies as a kid, like what was the Disney movie you gravitated towards?

What’s the movie you watched again and again and again? Right? What are the myths that you feel called to? It’s like these are ways that our psyche, our souls, are speaking to us in everyday life that we often miss if we. Are so cut off from anything that’s unseen. Right. Depth psychology really invites in the [00:17:00] ineffable, and this is what I love about it, is that we don’t pretend to have all the answers.

Mm-hmm. We don’t need to. Right. There’s a mystery to life, to psyche, to the collective unconscious. Right. That we will never touch and mm-hmm. We can’t quantify the unconscious. Right. And so. In that regard, I really, and I think we share this together, like I have no desire to be seen as a scientist. It’s like, uh, depth work is an art form as we’re easing out of summer, whenever we come into a seasonal change, I always like to do a number of different cleanses, and for me, quarterly parasite cleansing is a staple in my wellness habits, my wellness routine.

I’ve seen so many different types of parasite cleansing kits and supplements. I’ve [00:18:00] tried a good chunk of many of them. But the one that I think is the easiest to use and the most comprehensive is Rogers Hood Apothecary. I actually had Kim Rogers on the podcast a few weeks ago, if you missed that conversation.

It’s episode two oh one, two hundred and one. It was such an amazing conversation. She shared her story of how parasite cleansing was a huge root cause in her chronic illness. But in that episode, we really talk about how her parasite cleansing kit and products are so different from a lot of what’s out there on the market.

And for me, what really stood out is a lot of parasite cleansing kits are kind of falling into one of two categories, either A, they’re. Going directly after the parasites, but there’s no binding or supportive nutrients, or B, it’s more supportive nutrients and not enough things that actually go after the parasites.

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So check the show notes below and use discount code. Leann 10 for a discount, a checkout. I wanna go a little deeper into. That difference between, I think cognitive behavioral therapy is a lot of kind of the basis of a lot of modern psychology, modern therapy, and I’m, I’m not even discounting that. I think that absolutely has a place, having intellectual conscious, practical understanding and tools to help us in the present day is incredibly important.

I educate clients all the time on nervous system resources [00:20:00] and ways of kind of reframing their thought processes, where I feel that it, I don’t, I don’t think fall short is the right phrase, but does a disservice to ourselves is often I hear a lot of rhetoric around, yeah, your mind’s an asshole and you need to just kind of like get control of it, or you need to, you know, override those negative thoughts and.

In, in my opinion, that is like inflicting and creating even more wounding because the unconscious, in my opinion, is only ever here to protect us and guide us. And sometimes it’s working off of faulty premises, but I think there actually is a lot of emotional bypass that’s happening in these kind of cognitive approaches that do us a disservice into that deeper healing and that deeper tending.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think you said it so well. There’s so much to [00:21:00] be said about the effectiveness of some of these therapies, right? And like you said, it’s not discounting any of that. Right. And at the same time, what something like cognitive therapy can do is unintentionally gaslight mm-hmm. Somebody.

Right. And I think you’re, you’re speaking to that where it’s like, if we don’t actually believe that and we are just telling ourselves from this cognitive lens to change our thoughts, change our mind, or just override the fear, right. Or whatever it is, there is a disconnection between psyche and body.

Mm-hmm. And that tension is not a attention to be. Dissolved from a cognitive lens, it’s meant to be felt and embodied and like what young would [00:22:00] say, holding the tension of opposites, like really being with it and tending to the conflict, the inner conflict, the inner tension in your body, in your psyche.

And what he would say is that when we’re with the tension long enough, a new attitude, a third appears, it emerges out of the unconscious. And so, so many of the things that we are struggling with from this cognitive lens, we think that I have to make a decision and it’s A or B. Mm-hmm. Right or wrong, black or white.

And we get into that ego fixation. And a CBT therapist might say, okay, well let’s make a decision or let’s change our thoughts around the decision. And myself as a depth oriented practitioner would go, well, why don’t we stay with the tension and build capacity to be with the tension just long enough to see what may appear.

Mm-hmm. I don’t know. You don’t [00:23:00] know, right? Right. But it’s so much bigger than my ego and your ego and our egos together. It’s like, what? What is the unconscious, what is Psyche bringing us towards? What do we not yet know? Yeah. It’s a whole different level of exploration, but also, I mean, really it’s being in relationship with, I often will reference the unconscious as like inner self, outer self.

Mm. Inner self is kind of that unconscious outer self is more of our cognitive mind, but it’s rather than I am experiencing something uncomfortable, what can I do to get out of that as quickly as possible? You know, that’s maybe more the CBT approach, the depth oriented approach might be more like, huh? If that discomfort could speak, what would it say?

If this like constriction in my throat could speak, what would it be saying? And so to your point, it’s really, I think the best way I can [00:24:00] describe it is it’s going into relationship with any number of the sensations, discomfort, emotions that might be surfacing for us first before trying to immediately pivot ourself out of it.

And to be fair, I also think there’s a world in which we swim in that too much. Yeah. And then also like have to be able to pivot ourself out and go, I can’t just, I can’t just stew in these thoughts and feelings all day long. I do need to be able to function. And that’s why I think they’re all relevant.

They all have a time and place, but what I talk to my clients about all the time is. Only, only ever addressing things from a conscious intellectual perspective is only gonna take us so far. We know the unconscious is responsible for most of our lived experience and most of our decision making. So unconscious tending in whatever form really must be a part of the journey, in my [00:25:00] opinion.

Absolutely. And yes, you speak to the other side of it where we can kind of swim and be a little bit indulgent in the unconscious. Um, and that’s very real too. But yeah, you know, uh, our thoughts. Are not our thoughts because they’re our thoughts, right? We don’t just manifest our thoughts. They don’t start there, right?

It’s this bottom up approach where it starts with sensation in the body, right? Mm-hmm. It’s the first access point we have, and to me that is, oh, there’s, there’s maybe something right from a polyvagal term or stance. It might be like, oh, well, your body feels as though there’s a threat. Mm-hmm. Right? Great.

When we’re not threatened, why might we feel threatened? What might be happening in the unconscious or in psyche or in the, in the field. Mm-hmm. Of the collective unconscious that feels threatening at that moment. So [00:26:00] let’s follow the sensation. Is there an image? Is there a color? Right. Is there a feeling, you know, follow it.

Let’s follow it. Let’s amplify it. Let’s be with it, right? Mm-hmm. And so much of, uh, a top down approach of therapy is just let’s make sense of it. Okay. Check the boxes and let’s move on. And depth work is amplifying, right? Yeah. I, I joke so often that depth therapy isn’t meant to make you happier if you are trying to be happier.

This isn’t the, this isn’t the realm of psychology for you. It’s really about consciousness and building a bridge with your unconscious. Which I would argue ra, maybe it’s not happiness, but there is a level of peace. Mm-hmm. I think because that settles in, ’cause there’s such a deeper knowing of [00:27:00] the self and I think at our core, psyche, soul just wants to be seen, heard, acknowledged, witnessed it.

You know, that’s almost precedence over feeling better. And what I find time and time again is when we bring an awareness to some of the things going on in the unconscious, even if it’s not totally quote unquote resolved yet, or even metabolized yet, I find clients can experience an immense amount of peace just from being able to acknowledge and witness what is going on deeper.

Absolutely. There’s a contentment in being able to know that you can be with. All of the sensations and all of the motions, right? Mm-hmm. Happiness is fleeting. It’s, it’s temporary, but there is this contentment and knowing like, oh yeah. No matter what happens, I will be okay. Right? I can hold this. Mm-hmm. I can be with this.

[00:28:00] And, and that is such a beautiful part of depth work, right? Myself as a client, um, having experienced and continuing to experience that in my own union analysis work, but also as a depth oriented therapist, it’s like, it’s really just about. Being able to be with whatever is present. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then there is so much that continues to surface when we do that.

I don’t know if you find this in session, but when we instead of try to go, Hmm, that’s a quote unquote negative sensation or a negative thought, let’s override that immediately as quickly as possible. When we go to your point, you used one of our terms, which is amplify for the audience. That means like if I’m feeling this pressure in my chest, amplifying, it means like, let’s look at it deeper.

Let’s look at it dead in the face and go, Ooh, okay, let me feel that instead of trying to bypass it or replace it with something or make it go away. [00:29:00] But that process then sort of naturally spills into a lot more, I think unconscious material starting to surface. The way that I like to say it sometimes is when the unconscious knows we’re listening, it will speak a lot more.

And so when we, I love that when we bring awareness to, you know, we’re talking somatically right now, that that constriction in my chest, that heaviness. It’s so common in sessions that then that person is like five seconds later, oh my goodness, this memory from when I was six years old just surfaced out of nowhere.

Right. And I think in, in maybe a more kind of traditional therapy perspective, those might be dismissed as kind of, huh? That’s random. Weird. Okay. Back to the present thing. We’re focusing on in depth psychology, we would go, this is all, this is it. Whether it’s a memory that’s surfacing spontaneously or visuals, imagery, sensation, you know.

[00:30:00] All those different things. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. We have to build tolerance to be with discomfort. Mm-hmm. And the more that we’re with the discomfort, the more like you’re saying, the more the unconscious is like, finally, okay, you know, the floodgates are open, let’s go. Right. And the more we realize that the well runs deep.

Right. And just deeper, deeper, deeper. Right. And so much of the work, and so much of the work I do with clients is helping them gain capacity to feel the thing. Because the thought around feeling the thing or the fear around feeling the thing is worse than feeling it. The resistance we build up. There’s sort of this just very unconscious, foreboding, something bad will happen if I feel that thing.

But it’s so abstract and it’s so vague. And when we really even can bring a light to that, what do I [00:31:00] think will happen if I look, if, if I sit with this heaviness in my chest or this constriction in my throat, even starting there sometimes opens up. So much of you ask that question and all of a sudden the client’s saying, I think I’m gonna be overcome with emotion and totally regress and like not be able to show up for work and my family.

And now we start to go, okay, so that’s why. That’s what your unconscious is protecting you from. Yeah. Great. Can we work on 100% sitting with that? Yeah. And just little by little, right? It’s like our defenses are really helpful. They’ve kept us alive, they protect us. If we didn’t have ego defenses, we could not survive this world.

Right? And this is also why I am so passionate about the Enneagram, which we’ll get into in a little bit. But, you know, when we realize that defenses [00:32:00] just exist because our psyches need them, it really demystifies it, it depersonalizes it. We don’t have to shame ourselves so much that we all have trouble in, in certain ways of tapping into certain emotions or experiences or memories.

If it felt too intolerable in the past, of course we’re going to resist it, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that’s okay. And as a, as a therapist. I’m like, yep, great. Like we can work with the at, at the speed that the slowest part of you feel safe to work, right? Mm-hmm. It’s just about where does our intention go and how do we help our bodies and psyches move towards and titrate the experience of going into the dis discomfort and then safely coming back out and grounding and slowly learning [00:33:00] that that feeling isn’t going to kill us.

Mm-hmm. We’re not going to get swept up by the ocean if we put our toes in. Right. It’s like it’s really helping. It’s just helping it feel safer where there’s probably been no safety to feel that thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And it completely changes the way I think we dialogue with ourself when we’re in those kind of tough or stickier resistant moments.

Again, it’s the difference between. Oh, I’m what? Whatever it might be. Oh, I’m, I’m disassociating again during this party. Oh God, I hate that I do that. Oh my God, brain, you’re, you’re so stupid. Right? We know we shouldn’t do that. We know we’re safe. Just be present. Come on, get over it to, oh, right. It, it might shift in depth orientation to, okay.

A lot more grace and empathy of this is coming from probably like a 6-year-old me who had to disassociate to protect herself. [00:34:00] That was the only tool she had. That part’s kicking in a little bit right now and actually I have so much empathy and grace for that part. Thank you. You’re in discomfort and thank you for trying to protect me with the tools you had.

I might be here to say that there are more tools available to me than just this, but even just cha completely changing the way we dialogue with ourself in those moments, I think is so powerful. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, I feel like so much of the discourse right now in pop psychology or what I see on Instagram is this notion that your nervous system just wants to protect you.

And so go against it, right? And I’m like, well, sometimes it’s soul saying, no, we don’t want this, right? Mm-hmm. Sometimes we can recognize that we may have a defense that. Isn’t keeping us from our truth either. Right. Sometimes the defense is the [00:35:00] truth sometimes that that sensation is the truth. Mm-hmm.

Sometimes it is actually a no or sometimes it is actually unsafe and this is part of the work I do with clients too. I’m sure you do as well, where it’s like, let’s work on helping discern what is a true like no in the body versus what is an old historical no that keeps us from capital S self versus when is it capital S self that maybe is saying no or maybe saying yes.

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And I think there’s, you know, as we do, ’cause it’s always a pendulum. It started to swing so far to that end of it of like, oh, your nervous system dysregulated. That’s inherently bad. We should be, [00:38:00] first of all, this idea that we should just always be regulated, which isn’t correct or accurate. Yeah. But that, and if you are dysregulated, we need to use these tools to get back to regulation as fast as possible.

And again, there’s a time and a place for everything. But I am really so much of the mindset of like, before I try and take myself anywhere, can I just witness where I’m at and what communication might in that? And maybe the communication is coming from a protective part that is maybe like projecting or misreading the situation.

And maybe it’s coming from a very aligned, soulful, authentic part that’s like, actually no, this isn’t right for me, which is why I’m feeling this tension. We, I think we have to start there and go, what is this here to communicate? Then I can kind of respond accordingly. But to that end, I’ve also seen a lot of shifts towards bottom down [00:39:00] or body-based healing, which again, I am all for.

We want, we want to attune to and dialogue and work with the body specifically too in, I think healing specifically in trauma healing. But it can’t just stop there, right? If, if my nervous system is dysregulated, I think this all goes back to the unconscious it, it is dysregulated because there’s some, usually I find like a belief or a narrative that has gotten ingrained in the psyche and so we can be regulating with nervous system tools and products and technologies and treatments and services all day long.

But if we don’t get to the root of why is my nervous system dysregulated in the first place, we’re just gonna need to be soothing, soothing, soothing, soothing. Correct. Yes. I, I couldn’t have said it any better. And this is like the, the issue that I have with current wellness world and just the shadow of, of [00:40:00] the current times that we’re in, you know, there’s so, there’s so much goodness and so much light.

And also everything has a shadow, right? We have shadows and as individuals and as a collective. And it’s not something to shy away from or to make it mean that we’re somehow bad or wrong or that we need to like hide from the world or, or whatever. And this, this is another thing that I see so often is that there’s so much talk around.

Shadow is bad. Mm-hmm. Right? And shadow is just shadow. The shadow in, in depth terms is really the place in the unconscious where all of these parts of ourselves that the ego has deemed unlovable go, right? Mm-hmm. And so it’s just this like bag that we carry where we start stuffing all these parts in from the time we’re a little kid, you know?

[00:41:00] And, and I think of. You know, he says we have two primary needs as children, the need for attachment and the need for authenticity. Mm-hmm. And they’re both equally important, but as children, we are so reliant on our attachment needs for our care with our caregivers. Right. They literally keep us alive.

Mm-hmm. If we didn’t have those attachment needs met, we’d die. So the first thing to leave is authenticity. When we feel like it’s the thing that threatens our attachment needs getting met. Mm-hmm. Right. And so, so much of our authenticity and those like bright, young, innocent parts of ourselves go into the shadow as well.

Right. And so a lot of the gold, a lot of our inner gold is in the shadow. And right now in the wellness world, there’s a lot of. Talk around shadow work sessions, and I’ll help you heal your shadow and, [00:42:00] you know, from a depth oriented lens and somebody who’s, you know, studied this for years, like, that’s a little bit scary to me because one, the shadow isn’t something to be solved.

The shadow is a lifelong reckoning, you know? Mm-hmm. It’s not something that we can just tap into immediately and solve and move on. Therein lies the problem. Yeah. With so much of the psychological world today, right. This like cognitive left brain, overly masculine part of the collective psyche that wants to solve.

Mm-hmm. Versus learn how to be with. Mm-hmm. Right. And I think that’s what you’re saying too, is like before we go out and do anything, how do we just be, how do we be in this moment? How do we practice witnessing and how do we be sober to what is right now? And, [00:43:00] and there is just so much that then surfaces from that, that I find allows us It’ll forever.

Yeah, exactly. That allows us to, it’ll forever and ever. Completely. Completely. But to that end, and I could see why one though might be drawn to a more CBT type approach because it seems so structured and so, oh, well this is your problem, so this is what we do about it and da da da da dah. And I actually can empathize and resonate a lot with how, from the patient or client perspective that feels safe.

Yeah. I come to you, I tell you my symptoms, you give me a diagnoses, and once you’ve done that, you have a manual that tells you exactly how to deal with that. And that actually can be something that consciously or unconsciously makes me feel much safer in this work. A part of me wants to know there’s a very linear, clear path.

And I think what we’re doing here in depth size is so much more [00:44:00] organic and fluid and explorative. And that can, that can feel maybe a little wobbly for someone who’s like, no, no, no, no. I just wanna know so that I can get to it or through it or change it as fast as possible. Absolutely. I mean, there are parts of me that are like, can somebody just tell me what’s going on and can I, can I get like a plan and give you some worksheets?

And you know, like, that sounds so nice in theory. Right. And this is stuff that I still struggle with. Mm-hmm. And I’m sure you still struggle with we’re people, we have egos. Mm-hmm. We have minds that want to know. It’s just about being in relationship with, knowing that that isn’t all of what life is and, and challenging that, right?

Mm-hmm. Again. Mm-hmm. Why I include the Enneagram so much in my work is because it’s really [00:45:00] about challenging the ego perspectives, right? Where we get fixated uhhuh. Um, yeah. Well, I think that’s a perfect segue. I mean, we could talk for literally hours on depth psychology because it is so multifaceted and nuanced and I think the type of thing that you can really only describe in.

You know, kind of long form format. But I think that’s like a beautiful introduction. Great. That even, even if people don’t totally know exactly what is going on, they’re getting that sense of the soul and the psyche. And this is just a completely different depth and level and approach to tending and relating to your inner self.

So I love that. Yeah. Pivoting or transitioning to Enneagram, and you’re so cute ’cause you think you, you think you don’t know enough about this and you, anytime we’re on campus and we’re talking, you have so much to say about the Enneagram. Like you [00:46:00] absolutely are well studied on this topic. Okay, great. So I’m not gonna let you pretend like you’re not, but, and I think it’s like pretty well known now, just in case there’s anyone listening though who happens to not know what the Enneagram is, can you give us a little bit of an introduction to it before we dive in more?

Yeah, so it’s, it’s funny because I’m a type five and type fives are known as the investigators, and one of the core things that keeps fives away from showing up in the world is feeling like they don’t know enough. And so I’m laughing that that’s, that’s my ego story and narrative, right? And calling myself out right now.

So, you know, the, the Enneagram, it’s, it’s this system that we actually don’t know where it came from and. There’s a lot of mixed messages [00:47:00] of like, was it passed down from Sufi Traditions? Is it from mystical Judaism? Right? Where did it start? But the Enneagram, I have a book right here, and you can see this is the symbol for people who are watching this.

So what I love about it is that it’s a circle with nine points on it. And just coming from a Jungian lens immediately, you know, Jung talked about the archetype of the self, which is unity and wholeness, and, and who we actually are. That transcends our conscious mind, right? And that really the whole point of union or depth oriented therapy is coming home to that capital S self, right?

Mm-hmm. Young talked about. Self often imaginally and evangelistically shows up in mandalas. Right. Or, or circles. And so the Enneagram symbol is this circle with nine points, and we [00:48:00] think that it goes as far back as Pythagoras. Hmm, wow. And that there are very, very old ancient roots. And that somehow it’s been passed down through an oral tradition and it’s, it’s probably a lot different than what modern day Enneagram is.

But in the 1960s there was a man named Oscar Zo, and he was a Bolivian philosopher, and he was the one that kind of put the Enneagram together in modern day and brought it forward. And he really talked about how the Enneagram is not. A personality test, right? We have things that we take all the time or the, the quizzes that give us these results and kind of tell us who we are.

And the Enneagram is this system where, there, where he claims that [00:49:00] there are these nine basic personality types, and we are each born into one of them. Hmm. And we get kind of fixated, right? There’s this virtuous part of your Enneagram type, right? Every type has this virtue or this, um, positive light aspect, but we kind of get distorted and we, we lose our center.

And it, it makes sense because every type has a vice. Like a deadly sin, so to speak. Right? And it makes sense in terms of who we are. We’re born into this life with little souls, right? We’re already who we are, right? The Enneagram isn’t what happens to us, it’s what we’re born into. That also kind of gets fixated as a [00:50:00] young child because if, if the symbol is this whole circle, really the impression is that we’re all of them, right?

Mm-hmm. And even in this symbol, you see all of the dots connect to each other. All the lines connect, right? Mm-hmm. But it’s really about where have we gotten fixated and where have our egos and our defensive structures gotten fixated? And there are nine different ways that they get fixated. I have done so much research over the years into different nervous system tools, techniques, modalities, and honestly, the Apollo neuro wearable is the one that I come back to again and again.

It’s powerful, practical, and so easy to integrate into everyday life. What I love about Apollo is that it works through gentle, soothing vibrations. You can wear it on your wrist, your ankle, or clip it to your clothing. You don’t have to stop what you’re doing. I wear mine while working. [00:51:00] I wear it while I sleep, and I love how their results are backed by real science.

In a number of published studies, Apollo users saw a 25% increase in heart rate variability, one of the strongest markers of nervous system resilience. They experienced up to 40% less stress and feelings of anxiety, and 19% more time in deep. Apollo also can help people fall asleep faster, feel more focused during the day.

It can support an uplifted mood. Apollo is something I use every single day to support my nervous system, to make sure that I’m giving my body gentle safety signals all throughout the day to help me be more resilient, to help me recover faster, to help me sleep deeper. And it’s something that I recommend to clients all the time because it’s so gentle.

Non-invasive is backed by science and is so, so accessible. Click the link in the show notes below and you’ll get [00:52:00] $60 off your Apollo or use discount code the Accrescent for $60 off. I love that description of it. When we were talking on campus during one of our residentials, I, I kind of told you really openly.

I was like, I have a hard time with a lot of. Personality tests because I don’t feel like they’re actually able to distinguish between, is this who I inherently am or is this who I adapted to be because of trauma? And I think sometimes they can put you in a box when you take that test and you go, oh, well, I’m just, whatever it might be.

I’m just an introvert who doesn’t like to go out, so I’m never gonna do that. And we don’t realize, actually, that might not be my most authentic self. That might have just been who I adapted to be because of trauma, adverse experiences, childhood dynamics, et cetera. And you had such a great response to that, which was something about like, this is how we get out of the [00:53:00] box.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the thing I love about the Enneagram is that it paints this picture of where we’ve boxed ourselves. Mm-hmm. And that shows up through our ego fixation. Right. And so, you know, there, there are nine types. Maybe I’ll quickly go through them real fast. Yeah. The one is known as the archetype of the reformer and their virtue is serenity.

Right? The thing that connects them to the divine right is that serenity, but when they lose connection with the divine, whatever that means, right? Capital S self, the collective unconscious. When they lose connection with that, it turns into anger. Hmm. The two is the helper. Their virtue is humility, but their passion or vice is pride.[00:54:00]

Three, the achiever, their virtue is truthfulness, and their vice is deceit. Four, the individualist and their virtue is equanimity. Passion or vice is envy five, which we’re thinking you’re a five. Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. We need, we need to actually figure this out. I’m also a five. We’re known as the investigators or the observers, and our virtue is non-attachment.

Mm-hmm. But our vice is avarice or greed. A lot of people when they hear that think, oh, we’re greedy about money. It’s not, it’s about our energy. Yeah. About our inner resources. Right. Uh, six is the loyalist and their virtue is courage. In their vice is fear. Seven’s the enthusiast. [00:55:00] Their virtue is sobriety and their passion is gluttony.

Eight is the challenger. Virtue is innocence. Vice is lost. Nine is the peacemaker, virtue is action, and vice is sloth, which in the Enneagram is kind of, I know everybody gets an animal. No, it’s really, it’s really about like emotional and psychological, um, numbness so often. Oh no. Mm-hmm. That was a really good test for me.

’cause I said maybe I’ll go through them and then I was like, oh my God, do I know these? Um, see there’s my five ness coming out, right? Yeah. Completely. Just call calling on myself. But really, I’ll just say this one last thing is it, it has all of these mystical origins, right? Like, it, it picks up on the [00:56:00] Kabbalah and, and Christianity and Sufi wisdom and Buddhism and philosophy and really it’s like all about connection to something that’s bigger than us.

And our Enneagram type shows us where we lose connection to that. Mm. And how we get stuck and rigid and fixated and away kept away from capital S self. Yeah. When you explained it to me that way, that was the first time I even got interested in the Enneagram. Mm. Being able to understand it from that perspective I think makes so much more sense.

I know we’re kind of coming to the end of time here, but if you can. And then maybe we’ll have to have a part two. ’cause I always try to squeeze way too much into an episode. Oh my gosh. Well, I spent like 10 minutes going through each of the,

I always, I always do this where I’m like, and I wanna talk about this and I wanna talk about that. And I’m like, oh my God, girl, if you have more than five questions for them, [00:57:00] you are not gonna get through those seriously. Well, I’m happy to come back for part two, but I do think it would be nice and maybe as just like a really good segue and teaser for a continued conversation on what does that look like?

How do you bring Enneagram into client sessions? How do you find this being impactful or insightful? How does this, how you know, this is obviously a tool you really value and find brings value to your clients and the work and what does that look like? Well, I feel like in depth psychology, we have so many access points to the unconscious through things like dreamwork, active imagination, sand tray, all of these really cool, valuable tools.

I haven’t found something until the Enneagram that really gives us an access point to the ego and God of the very specific way that somebody’s ego has developed. Right? Of course, you are not just your Enneagram, it is a piece of the [00:58:00] constellation of who you are. But it helps kind of get past the initial defenses and call something out for what it is and gives us this lens to then view the rest of the conscious life through.

Because if, uh, because if you’re a five, you’re viewing things outside of you as taking so much of your energy. I can’t tell you how many times I wake up and I’m like, okay, I have four calls today. What time can I take a bubble bath tonight? Okay. I’m holding off for that moment. Right? Yeah, completely. And so much of my energy is fixated on this Aris quality.

Mm-hmm. Right? But for somebody who’s a different type, right, they’re going to be fixated and see the world through whatever it is they’re fixated on. So it really shows us the ego complex. Right. And. This work is to soften the ego. A big part of depth psychology is to soften the [00:59:00] ego to help it see beyond itself because it thinks it’s the center of consciousness.

Mm-hmm. But it’s just the center of the conscious psyche. Right? Right. And so the more that we can build, um, ego strength to be able to witness ourselves without thinking, this is who I am, this is who I’m not, I like this, I don’t like this. Right. The more that we can soften those defenses, the more we can come back into our truth, the more that unconscious can come forward, more soul can come forward.

So it’s really, um, it helps kind of meet that ego self access. Mm-hmm. And I would say that, you know, I’m using the Enneagram or thinking about the Enneagram in every single session I do with clients, always. Yeah, it’s just a lens that sheds an insight. Tell me if this is right. ’cause almost what I feel like I hear in that is it might be an easy way to map patterns.

I’m [01:00:00] fascinated, I’m so interested in patterns and when we have a quick way to map patterns, we can kind of cut to the course so much quicker. Absolutely. And maybe it sounds like that’s what this, that is, if you’re a four or a seven or whatever it might be, we can already have so much insight into many of your kind of instinctual patterns.

Absolutely right. And, and what I say is that everyone is so unique and so different. So you can have a hundred fours or a hundred sevens in a room and they’re all going to act different, but they’re all going to struggle with the core thing that they struggle with. Mm-hmm. And so what I say is that when I’m in the room with somebody and I have them take the Enneagram test our, you know, before our first session, tests aren’t always accurate.

It’s really about self-study. Mm-hmm. So study, look it up, read about all of them. Listen to podcasts. You’ll know, I always say, you know, you’ve hit your Enneagram type when you feel the deepest shame, like where it hits the like, [01:01:00] ooh, anything but that you’ve typed. Right. Um, but what I say is. The Enneagram helps me learn the genre of music that my client is, but I don’t know their particular song, Uhhuh.

That’s a really beautiful way that still holds the bio individuality of each person while allowing us still to observe those bigger patterns. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, we could go on and on and on, but I wanna be respectful of your time, especially as the two fives here. Well, Nadia, thank you so much.

Just for the audience, where can they find you? Where can they reach out to you? We’ll make sure it’s linked in the show notes too, but just so they can hear it here. Yeah, if you wanna reach out, I’m on Instagram, Nadia Rae Brackett, or you can go to my website, nadiaraebrackett.com. I love it. Thank you so, so much.

This was amazing. Thank [01:02:00] you.